


Hiding In The Light

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Late Night Conversations, Terminal Illnesses, X-Files OctoberFicFest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-29 08:24:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8482447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: They can only talk in the dark.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: cancer arc around Redux II  
> A/N: From a tumblr prompt.  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

He goes to see her late, after visiting hours are long over, but the nurses have seen him there before. They let him in. That’s when he knows it’s near the end, that there’s no point to Scully getting her rest. He stumbles, tripping over his own feet, his body suddenly numb. The light is still on in Scully’s room anyway, another midnight vigil. He takes a deep breath before he touches the door handle. 

Scully is scribbling in her journal. She tries to sit up when he opens the door, but barely manages to get halfway before sinking back onto the stack of pillows that props her up. There are rings under her eyes. He thinks he could count the days of her illness in them, the way they counted the rings of the trees in that forest in Washington state where death had been lurking inside them all along, waiting to strip their bodies of their resources. 

“It’s just me,” he says.

“Mulder, what…?” She trails off, her voice weak.

He shrugs. “I didn’t get a chance to drop by earlier. I wanted to see you.”

“I’m fine,” she says, and it’s so patently, absurdly false that he almost laughs and almost sobs at the same time. Instead, he just looks at her. She looks back at him and pats the edge of the bed. He sits down and takes her hand.

“Mulder, I…” she says, and stops again. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” he tells her.

“No,” she says. “I do. I just don’t know how.”

They gaze at each other. She looks less pale in the ruddy glow of the lamp. It’s unusual for hospital lighting. But he can still see the hollows that shouldn’t be in her cheeks, the whetted line of her jaw. The cancer has been wearing away at her, honing her down to the barest essentials of herself. The edges of her are sharp enough to slice his heart in two now.  
He leans forward and turns off the light.

“Maybe that will make it easier,” he says. He can only barely see her now. Moonlight filters in the window, but not much. She is a ghost in the dark. 

“I’m terrified,” she says. “My time is running out, Mulder.”

“I know,” he says.

“I keep praying,” she says. “I don’t know if anyone hears me. I know that my mother and Father McCue keep telling me to have faith, but I can’t help thinking of all the people who have been devoured by this illness. I don’t know how much faith I have left in faith.”

“I know,” he says again, and squeezes her hand.

“And you and I,” she says, and pauses. “You and I have never had the chance to really talk to each other. I didn’t even know that until it was already too late. I suppose I should thank Eddie Van Blundht for that, in a way.”

“I’m not sure he deserves any thanks,” Mulder tells her. 

“There are so many things I’ll never accomplish,” she says, and he realizes she’s crying. He stretches out beside her without thinking, cradles her to his chest. There’s so little of her in his arms. He lets her sob her sorrows into his shirt. It only takes a few minutes. She doesn’t have the energy to waste on weeping. 

“Thank you,” she says.

“Scully, I think you know that I would do anything for you,” he says.

“I know,” she says, muffled against his chest. “Thank you, Mulder.”

“I’m not going to stop looking for a way to save you,” he tells her. “And if I can’t, I’m not going to stop looking for a way to bring the people who did this to you to justice.”

“Not just to me,” she reminds him. Her fingers slip between the buttons of his shirt. “The others deserve justice too.”

“Scully,” he says helplessly, and kisses her brittle hair. She is so close to the end of her story, and still thinking of the way things should be.

He holds her until she is almost asleep.

“Go home, Mulder,” she says in a voice almost too quiet for him to hear. His eyes have adjusted to the dark by then; he can see the suggestion of a crease between her brows. 

“I could stay,” he offers.

“No,” she says. “Not like this.”

“Okay,” he says. She lets him rearrange the pillows for her as she watches with drowsy eyes. When he kisses her cheek, she smiles very slightly and closes her eyes. 

He goes home and does not sleep.

The next day, he leaves a bouquet at the nurses’ station along with a couple of bags of very nice coffee and a box of the fanciest chocolates he could find.


End file.
